The Reality Show continues...
Saturday night, well Sunday morning, around 2:30AM it all began. I was restless. Which always wakes up my human. She was fearful I was going to have a seizure. So she sat staring at me. And then she realized, I wasn't the ONLY restless one. Frodo was also restless. Elroy was sound asleep in his crate, but we PON boys couldn't seem to get settled. It was rather warm in the bedroom - we have had some VERY nice warm weather - so maybe that was it. My human opened the window. And that only made us more restless. We had had a rainy day all day Saturday, and although the rain had stopped, it was CRAZY windy. CRAZY windy. Maybe we are both getting sensitive to wind sounds - some dogs are - but we never have been before. Anyway, it took quite some time for us to settle down.
My human eventually fell asleep but not to worry - Elroy was sure to do his job of getting her up at 5AM - it didn't matter to him that it was Sunday. Besides, he slept through the 2AM wake up call. So my human dragged herself out of bed and took us out for our walks and fed us our breakfast. And as she was doing it, she battled with Elroy, who I will now refer to as the Friendly Giant, to keep his paws off the counter. He is so big now, he stands up and can pretty much take anything off the counter. What a great skill. And of course, my human has been TRYING to keep him off by saying "off" and taking him by the collar every time. Yeah - well that works if she is standing right next to him - but when she's on the other side of the room "off" means the same as "come." Or "stay". Or "sit." They are not exactly ingrained in his vocabulary. So she decided she really needed to do something. A friend had suggested that my human take some mouse traps and set them under newspapers at the edge of the counter. That way the traps would go off, not injure the dog but would frighten the dog from going on the counter in the future. Now my human is NOT into aversive conditioning so she was nervous about the idea and not too crazy about it. But after the wrestling match, she decided perhaps she should give it a try. And she would only try it since she could monitor the situation - and she would make sure that he could not possibly get hurt.
Well. Picture this. One very overtired human battling three dogs who are intrigued by these new "things" she is fiddling with. She painstakingly sets three traps and strategically places them on the counter. Then she puts newspaper on top. SNAP, SNAP SNAP. All of us just look at her. She sets them again. But she faces them well away from the edge of the counter because she doesn't want there to be ANY chance that the traps would go off and hit him. She's quite nervous about this whole idea. She gently lays the paper on top. And she waits.
Well she didn't have to wait long as counter surfing is the Friendly Giant's favorite sport. He puts his paws up and hits the paper. And nothing happens. Clearly putting the traps facing the other way will not work. She says "off" and after he has concluded that there is no food up there, he gets down. And jumps up further along the counter. Where there is no paper. Or traps. So much for THAT brilliant plan. We all just look at her and then stare as we see her go to the counter and deliberately set off each trap. Snap. Snap. Snap. She wasn't sure about this idea to start with, and clearly it wasn't such a good plan for our household. Time to start googling other solutions. Although I quite like that he can reach things - I'm thinking this could come in handy - as long as he agrees to share...
Happy Monday!
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